WikiLeaks Financial Block

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange lamented a preliminary ruling by the European Commission on Tuesday that it was unlikely Visa Europe, MasterCard Europe and American Express Co had violated EU anti-trust rules with their blocks on processing WikiLeaks donations.

Bank of America, VISA, MasterCard, PayPal and Western Union were among half a dozen U.S. payment firms to start the financial blockade just after the group published some 250,000 secret State Department cables in December 2010.

DataCell, a company that collected donations for WikiLeaks, complained to the European Commission after Visa Europe, MasterCard Europe and American Express stopped processing donations for WikiLeaks.

According to European Commission documents released Tuesday by WikiLeaks, two high-ranking U.S. politicians are responsible, at least in part, for a financial blockade that the organization claims has cut off 95 percent of its revenue. Wikileaks claims to have lost more than $50 million of donations over the blockade.

Wikileaks has found 1 way around its financial blockades with a global payment method called bitcoin. Wikileaks has taken in over $32,000 equivalent in more than 1,100 separate bitcoin donations throughout the blockade (1BTC = $10.00)

There is no question that WikiLeaks is a questionable site providing an online “drop box” to provide a secure and anonymous way for sources to leak sensitive or classified documents. Nevertheless, the United States has never charged WikiLeaks or any of its staffers with a crime, and neither have any other countries.